This time round, with their lush arrangements and 60's pop sensibilities Lambchop echo Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg. The music could provide a soundtrack for any Melville film. Perhaps Kurt Wagner sees himself as a modern music version of Alain Delon. Twitching his hat and chaining Gitanes. Or Gauloise.
While that has it's undoubted attractions, though, what with all the tenaciously lo-fi cool, I find myself needing an hit of Gian Maria Volonté. Some of that wild-haired menace that offset Delon in The Red Circle. And, which here, would every now and then crank it up a gear.
Trimming it down to one CD wouldn't go amiss, either. Maybe the production team couldn't make up their minds what to cut.
There is one obvious thing wrong, though. Aw Cmon and No You Cmon are supposedly two albums, yet the two CD cases are sold only in one box-set.
The weirdness doesn't stop there, either. The Aw Cmon CD is labelled No You Cmon and vice-versa; the No You Cmon CD is labelled Aw Cmon.
And just in case you not confused enough already, the Aw Cmon case is backed with the No You Cmon track-list and the No You Cmon case is backed with the Aw Cmon listing.
But wait! There's more! The Aw Cmon wrap contains the No You Cmon track-list. Conversely, and not a little perversely, the No You Cmon wrap contains the Aw Cmon list.
In the end I found myself navigating through the songs by matching the song lengths on the back of the outer box to the timer on my CD player.
Once you know what's going on, I suppose it's no matter. But, still, it's a stupid idea.
Mojo
Many of the songs - in contrast to Is A Woman's beautifully rambling epics - are short, some (in the case of the fine, two-minute Four Pounds In Two Days) feeling cut off in their prime, others a little undeveloped. A few of the instrumentals seem little more than a good riff that's perfectly content with being just that, a backdrop for the band members to showcase their skills (the Mowtowny Being Tyler, or Sunrise, where everyone from strings to steel gets to take a bow). One or two have an incidental music quality, less individual pieces than a slice lifted off a movie soundtrack (in the case of the nice and cheesy Jan 24, '70s porn). [TT: That last, not in my opinion]
The vocal songs are interesting. The Gusher's mix of bossa nova, heavy rock and smoky Parisian murmuring recalls a latter-day Serge Gainsbourg. On Low Ambition, There is Still A Time and Steve McQueen, the lavish string arrangements, late-night melodies and Wagner's deep, muttering, falsetto-free voice bring to mind Tindersticks. There's a garage rock song, a neo-J.J.Cale and a couple of tracks that would have sounded at home on their last CD. All very nice, but Aw Cmon and No You Cmon (the record company insists they're individual, separate albums, though they're as similar to each other in content as in title and are only sold as a pair) still feel less like albums than a celebration of being Lambchop. Something, whan it comes down to it, worth celebrating.
AGB Rating - Credit
Yeah, I don't buy that those are 2 separate albums in the least. But I am quite fond of them/it nonetheless.
Posted by: vague | 18 January 2005 at 14:06
Yeah, they're OK. But the packaging is more than completely stupid.
Posted by: Tony.T | 18 January 2005 at 21:01